I'm new to Arduino so please bear with me if i have missed something obvious. Using an Uno i have create a little temperature sensor that writes out the current temp every 10 seconds over the usb (serial) interface. I have created and compiled the code on my Windows machine, and if I use the serial monitor on in the windows IDE i can see the information fine.

What I want to do now is plug the Arduino into my Linux Nas (server 11.04) and write a little app to pull the temperature out and write it to a file. When I plug the device into my Linux box, it comes up on /dev/ttyACM0. If i try and talk to it via tail -f /dev/ttyACM0 it just sits at the prompt and i get no output. However, if at this point i then pull the device out, the temperature information then drops onto the terminal screen.

It's as if something is buffering the output, and as i un plug the device its clearing the buffer. I've not had a go at writing an application to try and get the information out, I'm not sure if the same thing will happen and would like to understand what's going on before i go any further.